Your thermal comfort is roughly half from air convection and half from the Mean Radiant Temperature (the average temperature radiating from all surfaces in a room). Existing radiant heating and cooling systems don’t measure the mean radiant temperature—they just measure air temperature, or the temperature of one or two surfaces in the room.

Reading both air temperature and the mean radiant temperature gives the more accurate “operative temperature”, so controls can keep people more comfortable and use less energy at the same time….